A New Kind Of Terror
by Elledreamer
Summary: AU. The war was lost, and now the terror has begun... Written for the 'What If' Challenge on HPFC


**Disclaimer: I don't own anything you may recognise.

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Word was that it was the start of World War Three. No one knew what was going on, and most people were frightened out of their minds. There had been no news from the government, electricity was one of the first things to go.

They lived in darkness. Raids were becoming more and more common. The man had heard horror stories of masked figures bursting into houses, flashes of light and strange incantations. Those who believed in such things were claiming that the devil himself had returned. He knew better.

He couldn't explain what was happening, but he knew who it was beneath the masks. It was men, just men. They were accomplishing everything in the sickest fashion possible, but they were just men.

He himself had spent months trying to deny what was going on. That it was just a phase. One attack that would last a couple of weeks and move on, but it hadn't. He found that out when his wife disappeared. She'd been out with friends. She'd never returned. Now he stayed inside, holed up in the house with his two young children. But he was kidding himself really. He knew they wouldn't be able to stay for much longer.

It was partly because they were running out of food, and supplies. But it was mainly due to what the man felt. They were coming. He knew they were coming. He'd heard them in the back streets. Vague flashes of green and piercing screams reached his bedroom window every night now.

The man now, finally had to admit the one thing that he'd been trying to repress for the past months. He was scared. He was scared out of his wits and he had no idea how to handle it. It was a new kind of terror that he'd never known before. But the thing that scared the man most was that he knew it would get worse. Whatever it was, whoever these _people_ were, they were coming, and they were going to destroy everything the man held dear, and he was scared…

_**Do not go gentle into that good night,**_

_**Old age should burn and rave at close of day;**_

He often wondered how he was still alive. Not only because of what he was living through, but why they hadn't had him killed. Everyone else he knew who'd had a run in with a Death Eater was dead. They didn't keep people alive for anything but information. Mercy didn't exist any more.

Which was the reason Terry wondered he was still alive, rotting here in Azkaban. He _didn't_ have information, yet he was still here, still breathing. They hadn't come to get him, they hadn't sent anyone to speak to him. He'd been left in his cell doing nothing, and it was unnerving.

Now, in this new world that he had come to know, Terry often wished he was dead. He could see now how his friends were perhaps better off being dead. In this life, the best thing you could have was freedom, but that wasn't even safe anymore, and it certainly wasn't any sort of life. Everyone else was either locked up in prison, or caged up in one of the many camps that had sprung up around the place. Even though he hated the place he was in, Terry was often grateful he wasn't in the camp anymore. Those places were hell.

Here, the worst thing was the loneliness. He was so cut off from everything that it was staring to feel strange. He heard the others, every now and again. Muttering or screaming. He'd had a few chats with some of the other prisoners, but that had been long ago, and they were long gone.

He often chatted to himself, quietly at night, even if only to hear some sort of a voice. They used to say Azkaban drove you mad. Terry wondered how much longer it would be before he was screaming and throwing himself against the walls.

He'd found himself managing to ignore the place though. He sucked himself into his own mind every night, and instead of the dank, dripping stone walls, and the cold sickness of the dementors, he was back at Hogwarts, back in the common room, the great hall, the DA… that's where Terry liked to be and he often wondered if that in itself was enough to make him mad. He didn't think so; he always came back to reality, no matter how much he tried to blot it out. It was still there.

As time went on, it did begin to affect him: the constant cold; the gnawing hunger; and the loneliness, and yet Terry liked to think that as they got worse, he got more used to it. But the worst thing was that the longer he was there, more thoughts flitted back into his head, bringing with them a new kind of terror. As he thought of Hogwarts, and home, and everything else he used to love, he found that that hurt more that anything.

The faces of his family and friends, the conversations, the jokes, the safety they always had and never realised it. Knowing that they didn't have it any more. Knowing how terrible life was for the people he knew. That was the worst thing, and he wished it would end.

Terry wished they'd come for him…

_**Rage, rage against the dying of the light.**_

_**Though wise men at their end know dark is right,**_

In all her days, she had never seen such horror. She'd dealt with a fair amount of things in her time, many she preferred not to remember, but nothing like this. This was something different. A new kind of terror that Poppy had only just come to understand. She hated what she was doing now, and yet sometimes felt blessed in the ways that she often managed to help people. Not in the way she'd expect though. Not at all.

As much as she hated it, she now worked for them. There weren't many Mediwitches on their side. At first, she had despised every minute of it. How could she work for them after everything that had happened? After everything they had done? The worst part of the job had been healing the Death Eaters. Knowing that by doing it, she was enabling them to go back out there to… Poppy loathed to even think about it. What the poor people out there were going through…

She'd had other jobs too. Often she was drafted in to heal Witches and Wizards who were originally from her own side in the war. They still were. For several months, Poppy went by quite naively about her healing, quite happy to fix these people. She only realised later why she was healing them. Usually a week later, they ended up in the morgue. Poppy didn't like to imagine what the poor souls had gone through before they had died. Been killed, rather.

Poppy liked to think she was a brave woman. She would've, quite readily refused to work for them if she'd thought it would have done any good. She'd tried that once. A young wizard had been brought in. He had been in a bad way, unconscious, but he at least was breathing. Poppy had refused to do anything. She knew what would happen if she healed the wizard. He'd be taken into the room where they took them all, where they didn't return from… Maybe by refusing to heal him, she could keep him safe with her.

The Death Eaters had been ready though. When they found she was determined to do it, they'd gone round her ward and murdered all of her patients in their beds. Even their own Death Eaters. Poppy realised then how serious they were.

So she continued in her ways. Her own mind told her that her job was to heal, it always had been, and it always would be. If she could do anything in this war, she wanted to do what she knew. The guilt pounded at her heart every waking second, and it plagued her dreams. By keeping true to her word, she was causing more death.

It was so complicated. The conflicting emotions of care and guilt wouldn't go away, and yet Poppy knew there was a final resort. Of course there was, there was a final option… she could take herself out of the equation. If she ran away from the dilemma she was in then she wouldn't last long, not after what she had done. But the guilt would go away… and maybe, just maybe, she could do a bit of proper good, some proper healing, without guilt, before they caught up with her.

There was one final option, and Poppy just had to find the courage to do it… she hoped she could find her courage soon…

_**Because their words had forked no lightning they**_

_**Do not go gentle into that good night.**_

Firenze didn't know what to think anymore. He didn't know what to _do_ anymore. Everything that he knew and loved about the world had changed. It was strange and frightening, and there were times when he seriously wondered what the future held. Right now it could be nothing but death and suffering… surely.

There were choices to be made of course. Choices that would almost certainly shape the future. His own future at least. It was a funny thing to think about, future. In such times now, it seemed difficult to comprehend it.

He used to look to the sky for guidance, but even now the stars couldn't provide him with any comfort. More to the point, they couldn't provide him with answers. It was as if, they themselves were retreating even further into the great blackness surrounding them. Their time with those on the Earth had seemed to come to an end. Sending back to earth only a new kind of terror that he'd never considered before. For once, Firenze was lost, and alone.

He knew he wouldn't be for much longer. They'd found the others eventually. He'd lost contact with the rest of his kind a long time ago. Firenze was intelligent enough to know that they'd realise soon enough where he was hiding out and would come to get him. He was unsure of what would happen. Whether they'd execute him straight away, or try to win him round. Firenze knew that Voldemort and his followers valued centaurs on their side, but he wondered if his past would catch up with him. Make him a traitor.

Honestly, Firenze didn't know what would come. He'd spent his whole life learning and predicting the future, and now, staring up at the lifeless black sky, he knew. He knew that he'd never know what was going to happen. He supposed he'd just have to have some faith…

_**Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright**_

_**Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,**_

There wasn't a day that went by that she wasn't cold. It seeped into everything. Hovered in the air ready to strike whenever it felt like it. It was always cold now. Demelza sometimes liked to think that it was just some silly charm or spell, and that one day they'd find the horrible person doing it and chuck them out. But deep down, she knew she was kidding herself. Of course the cold was real. She'd managed to get more and more used to it now, and at the moment it was just a dull reminder of what was happening.

Tonight was worse than others. Demelza felt horribly sick, and the shoulders that were pressed against hers on either side were not the familiar ones she was used to. The familiar shoulders of her friends had gone.

She'd been camping out in the underground system for almost a year now. Each night was the same. Cold. Fear. A deathly silence that nobody ever dared to break. A new kind of terror. Nobody knew what to say.

It had become a hideout for them, a sanctuary, and the nearest thing to a home any of them could imagine. It was the place that kept them alive.

Demelza knew nothing more than each passing moments these days. She didn't let herself think of what had happened, that was too painful. She didn't let herself about the future either. That was even more painful. Instead, she thought of each passing moment as it came. There was no other easy way to live in this changed world. It was the moment she was in, and the things around her that took her attention. It was better that way.

Things were changing… of course they were. Sometimes Demelza liked to think that there was still some hope left. That perhaps they really did have a chance of fighting back, and that along with all the horrible things that were changing, good changes were happening too. It was that tiny piece of hope that Demelza clutched onto.

She found herself distracted to a certain degree. As time passed she found herself becoming the mother, an unofficial leader as it were, of the underground tenants. Usually, Demelza wouldn't call herself a leader, but here she welcomed it with open arms, distracting herself from everything by looking after the younger ones, making sure they had food, and comforting the others her age with sympathetic hugs.

But the mothering only worked for so long, and then the realisation hit again, and the cold came back. It was those times that Demelza really felt alone…

_**Rage, rage against the dying of the light.**_

_**Wild men who caught an sang the sun in flight,**_

People called it hell. They weren't far wrong. Lee himself only refrained from using the word because he was bloody certain that there were things a lot worse than what they were living in, and death wasn't one of them.

He didn't like to think about it at all really. People cursed it every day. There were children crying in the tightly packed streets, and bodies were strewn every few meters. People had every right to curse it, and Lee knew that. But personally he hated it. He doubted that he'd be able to survive if he had it on his mind all the time as well as living through it.

So time and time again, he tried to let his mind wander to other things. Better things. Not for the memories of it all, Lee knew better than that now, but just so he had something that wasn't as depressing as the world around him. So whenever he saw the horrors around him, there was something a little happier to think of.

People told him he was mad. That there was no escaping the awfulness around them and that he had to accept it if he wanted to survive. That it was a new kind of terror that no one could get away from. But Lee had grown up with an attitude of fun and games, as well as the Weasley twins once he'd reached Hogwarts. There wasn't anything that was going to stop him from at least trying not to be depressed.

But over time he found it fading. Every time he shut his eyes and tried to imagine what life had been like, a little bit more of it vanished. He forgot what colour Pygmy Puffs that Fred and George had in the shop. He forgot how the school song sounded when everyone joined in. He forgot the feeling of the fire in Gryffindor tower. He even started to forget people. He tried every day to recite the names of those in the DA. Both the new and old ones, and every day he missed more and more of them.

It was fading, falling away out of his head, and the world he was in was taking over. The grey streets, the bitterly cold wind, the wailing of the abandoned children and the smell of death. It was taking over, and Lee knew that it would only be a matter of time before he lost the old world completely.

He dreaded that day coming…

_**And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,**_

_**Do not go gentle into that good night.**_

The human form was alien to her now.

It had been so long since she had taken it, she couldn't remember how it felt anymore. What it had been like to stand on two legs instead of four, to have hands and feet, to be able to speak physical words.

But this is what was needed now. She'd resorted to the one thing she'd always vowed she wouldn't. Hiding. Hiding and running. When she'd first decided to do it, she'd convinced herself that it was all for a very good reason, and that eventually, she'd use it for something.

She'd planned on gathering information. Reconnaissance. She'd creep up, unseen and ignored and find out all the information she could. Then she'd report it to the rest of the Order.

Except there was no 'rest' anymore. As far as she was aware, she was the only one left. Of course, there hadn't been many of them before the battle anyway, but she'd hoped beyond hope that some of them had survived the onslaught, and actually done something about it. But everything she was hearing told her otherwise.

They were all dead. Dead or worse, trapped in Azkaban or one of the camps. There was no one left. No one left to report back to.

She'd heard some stories. There were still a few out there. Those who had somehow done the impossible and avoided _his_ clutches. But what could they do against the armies of thousands?

So she stayed how she was. She carried on gathering information in the vague hope that someday it would be useful to someone. But deep down, she knew the honest truth. The information would never be useful, and she'd probably never take the human form again. She'd fade away into nothing, and the world would be left to rot in the clutches of the new kind of terror that had turned it into a warped version of hell.

She'd be forgotten, and then, Minerva McGonagall would be nothing.

After all… who ever cared for a cat?

_**Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight**_

_**Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,**_

It would reach France soon. Her parents had told her that morning. They'd made her pack up her things and have them ready for whenever they had to leave. The murders were becoming ridiculously frequent now. You couldn't walk down the street anymore without seeing one of the Death Eaters. The new world was coming. It would bring with it a new kind of terror that frightened Gabrielle to the core. It wasn't anything she had ever known before, and she hated it.

It wasn't even the worst thing really. Gabrielle had known all along that Voldemort would come to France too. Deep down, she'd known ever since they'd received the news that they'd lost the fight at Hogwarts. After that everything had changed anyway.

They'd heard nothing but stories. Stories and rumours. They'd heard nothing from Fleur. Nothing from Bill. Nothing from any of them. It was like they had been wiped out of existence, and Gabrielle knew that was probably the truth.

Her mother had wept for days after the news, crying and wailing for Fleur, sobbing into Gabrielle's hair as she clutched her youngest daughter to her. Her father had taken on a steely bitterness, and Gabrielle's attempts to talk to him were only met with cold glares.

Gabrielle herself had cried. Merlin she had cried, but not just for Fleur and the others she knew, but for everyone. All of them over there suffering unimaginable things. Things that Gabrielle in all of her twelve years could not even begin to comprehend. Some nights she made herself sick with fear and grief. Crying until she couldn't breathe properly.

But it wasn't just the heartbreak of losing those she loved that was causing it. Gabrielle cried for other things too. Things she never dared speak of, or admit. She tried to blot it out of her mind, but she knew. Deep down, she knew the real reason she was crying. Gabrielle was scared for herself.

She wasn't brave, she wasn't determined or vengeful. She was selfish. Every time she heard the news about what was happening in England, all she could think of was how it wasn't happening here in France, and how glad she was that it wasn't. Her sister and friends were over there getting… slaughtered. But all Gabrielle really cared about was herself. And how very much she wished it would never happen to her.

The feelings didn't come without guilt of course, but what use was guilt when something like that was coming to your own country?

So Gabrielle packed her things, and she comforted her mother and dutifully helped her father. But every waking hour she just tried to push the fear away in some half hearted hope that she could prepare herself for what was to come.

But she couldn't, and every day that it didn't come to France gave her a slither of relief. Voldemort wasn't here yet. And Gabrielle was glad.

_**Rage, rage against the dying of the light.**_

_**And you, my father, there on the sad height,**_

It was time. Six months training all came down to this moment. The final test. Katie knew that it had been coming since the beginning. She'd known all along what she would have to do. But now, she still couldn't believe that it was time. Everything that had happened, and this was it…

The robes were laid out of the bed. They stood out stark black against the deep red duvet cover. Looking at them now, Katie couldn't get over how ominous they actually looked. But they were going to be hers. Soon, she'd be finished, and everything would be done.

She changed slowly, trying to ignore the slight shake in her hands and the sick feeling that crept up through her. It was wrong. She shouldn't be feeling like this now, not after everything that had happened. It wasn't as if this test was something she wasn't used to. It wasn't even a test really, she'd done it before. Six months of training, going on missions and proving herself had turned her into someone she barely recognised anymore. But she'd done it all now, and one final test wasn't going to get in her way.

She finished changing and sat down on the bed, clutching her wand tightly. The memories of the things she had done flashed through her mind. The screams, the cries and wails, the begging. The wide pleading eyes that stared up at her from the floor where she'd put them…

Katie stood up quickly. This wasn't right. Those memories shouldn't be haunting her now. Not now, not at the final hurdle. She shook her head quickly, rolling her shoulders. She could do this. She had to. It was the whole bloody reason for everything she'd done.

Some people (many people) would have argued that she'd taken the cowards way out. But Katie had considered it deeply. The line between what was good or bad was gone now. Erased like chalk from a blackboard in many a green flash. It didn't matter now. None of it mattered. Why should it when the world was like this? Katie knew she was hated by millions. But why did it matter? Why did any of it matter any more? Why did life have to have meaning?

She heard her name called from the other room, and the sound of it brought another memory flashing back. Teammates on a Quidditch pitch, shouting her name, a red ball being passed to her-

But no, that was gone now. Gone and forgotten and unimportant. Just like everything else. Just like everyone else. She'd done the things she'd done to prove that.

As she reached out for the handle of the door, the sleeve of the robe slipped down, and Katie stared at the black entwines on her inner forearm. It stood out on her pale skin. Waiting. Waiting for her to finish it. That was why she'd done it all. And now it was time.

There were two people in the room. One was one of the other Death Eaters. He was masked, but Katie vaguely recognised the eyes that stared back at her. He had been on one of her squads once. He was stood next to the other figure in the room, holding it at wand point, but staring at Katie. Waiting for her to finish it.

Katie's eyes flickered to the figure on the floor. It was a girl. She looked no older then thirteen. She wore only a T-shirt and underwear, her hair matted and twisted. Her arms and legs bore the usual bruises and marks of someone who'd been a prisoner for a while, and blood dripped from a fresh cut on her forehead. She was gagged tightly, and her arms were pulled firmly behind her back by rope.

Katie had been trained not to look at victims. But this time, she couldn't help a small glance. The girls' wide eyes pleaded at her. Green and wide, they stared at her in horror, reflecting the new kind of terror that Katie was so used to seeing in her victims.

But these eyes held something different. These eyes held something that left Katie unable to draw her own away from the girl. They took her back, back to a circular room with a roaring fire, and a gaggle of friends around her. Squishy red armchairs, and the face of a friend looking at her with bright green eyes…

The Death Eater coughed suddenly. Katie's eyes snapped up, and she was back in reality. Back in the room. She looked at the white masked face, cold creeping up her arms, and then back into the fear filled ones belonging to the girl.

It was simple really. Katie thought. One curse. Two words. She'd done it countless times before. It really was easy. But this time. This time she was faced with something more. Something she'd never even contemplated having before. She had a choice.

She had one curse to cast. One curse. Two words.

Two potential victims.

One, the representation of everything she had worked to, the confident blackness that she was so used to. The one who held the mask to her future.

The other, the representation of everything that had been. Curled up in pathetic fear on the floor. But holding something that burned so familiarly in Katie's heart. Something she never thought she'd feel again. The one who held her death.

One choice.

It was easy really, Katie thought. It was always going to be this, and deep down, she knew that she'd known it all along.

Slowly, she raised her wand, and smiled.

_**Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.**_

_**Do not go gentle into that good night.**_

They said it was the last safe place left now. They said it was the only place where you had a chance of surviving. The girl hadn't dared to believe them. In a world like this, rumours were all everyone survived on anyway.

But of course, she'd followed them anyway. What else could she do? She'd been offered one last sparkle of hope, and even if it was in the form of a rumour. It was all she had.

She'd seen things that she never wanted to think of again. She experienced a life that was only half a life, and she lived in a world that wasn't a world, but a place that held the fear of a thousand tortured souls.

But everything had come down to this. One measly rumour. And she was about to find out if it was true.

The night was silent around her. The only sounds she was aware of anymore was the scraping of her boots on the path, and her own breathing, loud and shaky. Each emitting a cloud in front of her. The trees alongside her seemed to overhang. Engulfing her, trapping her. But she was almost there. She knew it. And the girl knew that it was here. She could feel it. She could feel the safety enchantments reaching out, almost ghostly.

But then it all changed. The familiar heat of excitement that had been crawling through her chest was now swallowed by a different feeling. Coldness. Fear. It shot through her body like a stunner, ripping through everything she held dear anymore. Helpless, the girl fell to her knees, breathing deeply though the now icy lifelessness that crawled through her. It hit her. A new kind of terror took any traces of happiness and hope that existed inside of her. That had ever existed inside of her.

Then, as the pure, blinding terror rose into an unbearable climax, the girl caught one last image. One last image that burned deep into her mind as the dementors surrounded her, and she fell lifeless and empty to the ground.

Glittering high in the bright midnight sky. The dark mark hanging above The Burrow.

_**Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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**A/N: This was written for the 'What If?' Challenge on HPFC, and my claim was 'What if Voldemort had won the second war?'**

** The poem featured is 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night' by Dylan Thomas. **

**I want to say thanks to my beta Spinky who did a great job fixing this all up. Furthermore, writing this has inspired me to think up something a lot bigger, and as such, I've decided to write a full length fic based in this world which I will be starting soon, so if you're interested then keep an eye out. Please review. I loved writing this and I'd really like some feedback!!**

**Elle xx  
**


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